Comparative studies on coagulation and adsorption as a pretreatment method for the performance improvement of submerged MF membrane for secondary domestic wastewater treatment

Membrane fouling is the main limitation of water and wastewater treatment. Coagulation and adsorption can remove organic materials which play an important role in fouling phenomena. Thus, this study focused on the comparison of the hybrid process of coagulation and adsorption coupled with microfiltration (MF) membrane for the secondary domestic wastewater from an apartment complex in Gwangju city, South Korea. Coagulation and adsorption were adopted as a pretreatment method prior to MF treatment. Three different powdered activated carbon (PAC) and ferric chloride were used as an adsorbent and as a coagulant. MF was operated in a submerged mode using hollow fiber polyethylene membrane with pore size of 0.4 m for the separation of suspended organic solids resulted from coagulation or PAC particles, which are used for adsorbing organics dissolved in wastewater. Prior to study on the hybrid system, the performance of coagulation and adsorption processes were optimized individually for the removal of organics. Then, the overall performance for the hybrid system of coagulation/MF and PAC/MF was evaluated based on TOC removal, turbidity removal, and flux decline. It was found that the combined coagulation/MF and PAC/MF showed similar performance for TOC removal while coagulation/MF resulted in a significant decrease of the flux decline.